THE TROUBLE WITH DECEIT

Part 16 Rescue plan

The bus lurched to a halt at the coordinates indicated by his dashboard homing device. In fact, they were led to a tiny brick building off of a lay-by on a little used road, and but for the fact that the device told them that this was where the portal was, nobody would be any the wiser. Professor Arnold was already opening the transmission line that connected the dispatching and the receiving portals. Moments later they could hear Helen Ritch's voice worriedly stating, "it's Helen here, what's happening there, did our plan work?" Speaking rapidly Tom quickly appraised her on the situation, saying, "I'm afraid we have a serious problem, Helen. We have a very seriously injured young man here and we are going to bring him with us. You will need to re-calculate our mass, and quickly as well, our man can't last much longer. I'm so sorry, I know this is highly illegal, and a big ask, but we need there to be a surgeon and a medical team awaiting us. Our man has a major abdominal stab wound and he has lost too much blood. I want us transported there in fifteen minutes at the outside. Do what you need to do to make it all happen, Helen, this mans life is now in your hands. Coming through now there will be four us, all average size males.

Shaking her head despairingly a tearful Fey said, "what can we do, we can't just wait here and do nothing, he's dying!" In spite of the anguish that he was feeling Kip moved away from Reece and put his arm around her. "We have done all that we can for him now Fey, he won't die." Suddenly Kip too was sobbing, struggling to speak through his tears, he said, "I know how hard this is for you Fey. I do still love you, I always will, but this man Reece, I feel him here in my chest and it hurts. I feel him so bad that if he dies I am sure I will die also, but he won't Fey, he will hang on for me. I have to go back to him now, he needs to know that I'm there." Kissing her gently her cheek he left her and returned to Reece's side and tenderly took hold of his motionless hand

Outside the little clothing store, Rani was surprised to see that it was the housekeeper herself who had arrived to pick her up in her own little car. As they were driving to the hostel Rani explained, as best she could, what had happened and where everyone else had gone to. "Oh, you poor dear, well I know of one young man who is going to be very relieved to see you back in one piece," Lottie said kindly. As soon as Lottie arrived back at the hostel with Rani, Dev rushed over to her and swept her into his arms. "Oh Rani, I have been so worried about you, word got back that somebody was injured, I~I thought it was you! Where are Kip and Mr.Howard and his professors." As she related to him all that had happened he suddenly saw things very differently. He loved Kip as though he were his own brother, and now, at this moment he saw everything very clearly in his mind. The fear he had felt when he had assumed the injured person was Rani, that was how it felt for Kip with Reece. Worse in fact, because he must be terrified that he is going to lose him forever, and by the sound of it, with good reason.

Back in the day, when the existence of these time portals had first been discovered, there had been a rush to discover more of them, and soon they had developed a method of locating them. It turned out there were a lot of them in most countries. Although they could not be physically seen there were soon detectors available that could pinpoint them. At the time there had been a big misconception that they would soon enable people to travel anywhere in time. To go back in time in cases like this, to before an event and change it, so that it would never even happen. Soon however they soon realised that this was purely a natural phenomenon and could not be altered, it was what it was. The portals had limitations, they were permanently linked to other portals, like the two beads on the end of a shoelace, and for a reason still not fully understood the time distance between the portals in every case, was exactly one hundred years and thirty-four days. Also, there were only portals to the past, none to the future, and this meant that the big secure establishments housing the portals could only be built at the dispatching sites, as it had been agreed that it would cause worldwide chaos if the population of one hundred years ago knew that their future already existed. That was why the rules were so strict about not interfering in any way with history. It could have devastating consequences on the present. Strict protocols had been introduced and all of the known portals had been developed by various governments around the world, and of necessity, they all liaised with each other. This technology was only three years old, and this would be the first time ever that the portals had been used in this way. However all of this turned out in the end, there was going to be a lot of repercussions, a lot of explaining to do, and possibly criminal charges against all of the participants in the events connected with this particular BTP.